Posts for 'Amazon'

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the FTC will be the agency to review Amazon’s acquisition of MGM. A review was expected, either by the Justice Department or the FTC. The plot thickener here is that the brand new FTC chair is Lina Khan, a law professor and journalist who was confirmed by the Senate last week in a bipartisan 69-29 vote. Importantly Khan is a critic of Amazon and Big Tech, having written a widely circulated article, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” in 2017.

The article argues, in a nutshell, that the current approach to antitrust, which is focused on “consumer welfare,” is insufficient to oversee platform-based businesses like Amazon which can use predatory pricing for their overall competitive benefit. Rather, Khan believes that antitrust oversight needs to be driven by gauging the concentration of market structures and competitive process, which she writes is a more traditional approach. Khan shares five factors for how to evaluate the competitive process.

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Welcome to this week’s edition of Inside the Stream, the podcast where nScreenMedia’a Chief Analyst Colin Dixon and I take listeners inside the world of streaming video.

After weeks of rumors, Amazon officially announced its acquisition of MGM for $8.45 billion. On this week’s podcast Colin and I explore what the deal means to Amazon and to its Prime members. Colin sees benefits to Amazon beyond bolstering Prime member retention and acquisition, whereas I think these are the deal’s primary rationale.

Nearly five years ago, Jeff Bezos articulated the “flywheel” dynamic of Prime - how video contributes to member acquisition, usage and retention (jump to the 37 minute point in the video interview). I’m guessing that Amazon did extensive consumer research on different parts of the MGM massive catalog to understand how filtering them into Prime could move the membership needle.

While the James Bond franchise has received a lot of attention, the MGM catalog includes 4,000 movies and 17,000 TV show. These, plus the potential spinoffs or as Amazon’s Mike Hopkins put it - “the treasure trove of IP in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine” - give Amazon a huge amount of programming optionality for years into the future. It will be fun to see how Amazon curates all of this programming into Prime.

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If you were one of the 14,000 attendees of last week’s NewFronts presentations, a central message that you couldn’t miss was that streaming has become an essential way for advertisers to reach 18-49 year olds. The coveted age group, which has long been the bread and butter for TV networks, is rapidly shifting its video consumption behaviors, and NewFronts presenters wanted ad buyers to know that they can either follow the eyeballs or risk losing access to this huge cohort.

Presenters expressed the message in different ways, but here are a few that caught my attention:

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Content being used to drive consumer purchases isn’t a new idea, but streaming is breathing renewed interest, with a variety of different strategies and implementations. A number of interviews and articles illustrating the trend have recently caught my attention.

Given its commerce, content and technology capabilities, Amazon is primed (pun intended) to be a major player. In an interview at IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting a couple of weeks ago, Amazon Studios’ COO and Co-Head of Television Albert Cheng talked at length about how the company is using its Prime Video app on certain connected devices, along with its “X-ray” feature, to enable seamless viewer transactions. Albert highlighted successes the company has had with Rihanna’s “Savage x Fenty,” Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn’s “Making the Cut” and NFL Thursday Night Football.

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A record 109.1 million connected TV devices (smart TVs, streaming sticks and boxes, and game consoles) were sold globally in Q4 ’20, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. That was up 9% from the 100.3 million CTV devices sold in Q4, ’19 and up 34% from the 81.5 million sold in Q3 ’20. Amazon led with 12.1% market share for the first time, edging out Samsung, which fell to second with 10.9% share. Following Samsung were Sony (8.2%), Nintendo (7.7%), LG (5.9%) and Roku (5.8%).

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I’m pleased to present the 522nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. For all our listeners especially in states seeing a spike in Covid, we hope you’re staying safe.

There were several examples this week of how linear TV is continuing to adapt in the OTT/CTV era which Colin and I discuss. Top on the list is Comcast’s decision to offer the Sling TV app for its Xfinity Flex broadband-only users. Comcast has been adding broadband subscribers and losing video subscribers for a while and the move seems to signal Comcast wants to enhance the competitiveness of Flex, giving cord-cutters an inexpensive option to rejoin the pay-TV world.

The bar for Flex is getting higher partly due to Fire TV which this week unveiled content discovery integrations with YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV and Sling TV. The integrations make accessing linear TV seamless within one UI, and will drive virtual pay-TV subscriptions within the Fire TV base.

Listen in to learn more about how linear and “virtual linear” TV are adapting to find viewers!
 
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As stay at home guidelines remain in place, it seems like more and more free TV and video are being made available, spanning the short and long ends of the tail (meaning super-premium through user-generated) - and everything in between. Not only does this create more choices for viewers, which will be welcomed, it also means more competition for subscription video services which were already vulnerable to belt-tightening. And for free TV/video that is ad-supported, it means more inventory and choices for advertisers.

Here’s what’s caught my eye just in the past week:

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There was nothing surprising when I read last week’s coverage of FX CEO John Landgraf’s tally of original productions in 2019. According to Landgraf, the number of original dramas, comedies and limited series across all SVOD and TV networks in the U.S. reached a new high of 532 (approximately what he previously predicted). That was up from 495 in 2018, 487 in 2017 and just 182 in the pre-SVOD days of 2002.

This dynamic, which Landgraf has dubbed “Peak TV,” is leading many, if not most, ad-supported entertainment-oriented cable TV networks onto a road to nowhere if their goal is to remain ad-supported entertainment-oriented cable TV networks in the long-term. What is far more likely is that being this type of network will become unviable and so they’ll morph into studios that provide premium original and library content, mostly for bigger platforms (e.g. Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Hulu, etc.) and sometimes for their parent companies’ direct-to-consumer OTT services.

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Amazon announced this morning that it has over 40 million active Fire TV users globally, up from over 37 million that it reported in early September, 2019. The 3 million or so gain would represent monthly growth of around 750K Fire TV users. Amazon said there will be 150+ Fire TV edition models in 10+ countries by the end of 2020. Fire TVs include sticks, boxes, smart TVs, sound bars, auto screens and devices for pay-TV operators.

By Amazon’s count, Fire TV was already the top connected TV (CTV) provider globally in Q3 ’19, and its lead over Roku will likely expand just a bit for year-end 2019. Roku will report Q4 ’19 results on February 19th. At the end of Q3 '19 Roku reported 32.3 million active user accounts. In Q4 ’18 Roku added 3.3 million active user accounts, which would mean even if Roku doubled its quarterly growth in Q4 ’19 (which is unlikely), it would still be shy of Fire TV’s total.

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I’m pleased to present the 488th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

On this week’s podcast, Colin and I explore how powerful partnerships can be in the increasingly competitive SVOD space. First, Colin shares details on the Amazon-Premier League partnership which was first announced in June, 2018, but will be implemented for the first time in December, 2019. Under the deal Amazon has exclusive streaming rights to 2 blocks of 10 Premier League games. Colin crunched the numbers on what the deal could be worth to Amazon in the UK.

Then we turn our attention to the Verizon-Disney+ partnership announced earlier this week, in which Verizon's unlimited plan wireless subscribers will gain a full free year of Disney+. The deal could easily jumpstart Disney+ with several million subscribers.

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I’m pleased to present the 486th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Colin and I were both excited to see Hulu launch a mobile video downloading feature this week. Hulu had teased the feature over a year ago. As Colin notes though, because it’s only available with the Hulu (No Ads) service and only on iOS devices, just around 15% of Hulu’s overall subscribers will gain access to downloading (at least for now).

We then discuss reports that Disney doesn’t yet have an agreement with Amazon for its forthcoming Disney+ service to be included in Fire TV devices. The deal is held up due to Amazon’s attempt to wrangle more ad inventory in Disney’s other apps. The situation is typical of the complex and sometimes competitive relationships between big media and technology companies today.

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Last week, the WSJ ran two articles that underscore how Disney is navigating new terrain as it prepares to launch Disney+ in November. The articles also showcase how convoluted relationships among major media and technology companies are going to become over fights for shifting leverage.

One article described how Disney has continued to ban advertising from Netflix on its entertainment TV networks (ESPN is still ok) even though it will accept ads from other SVOD providers. The other article described Disney’s negotiations with Amazon over how much ad inventory Amazon should be allocated to sell in Disney’s apps that run on Fire TV. The article noted no deal at all has been reached for Disney+ to be carried on Fire TV, as the SVOD service’s launch date nears.

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Discovery announced an intriguing direct-to-consumer offering yesterday called “Food Network Kitchen” in collaboration with Amazon. While SVOD announcements seem to occur on a near-daily basis, Food Network Kitchen has different ambitions, combining daily live and interactive cooking classes hosted by celebrity chefs along with a deep on-demand library of classes, plus viewing and voice navigation using Amazon Alexa and Fire TV devices. iOS and Android mobile devices will also be supported when Food Network Kitchen launches next month, with others coming next year.

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I’m pleased to present the 474th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week Colin and I discuss the “detente” that Amazon and Google seem to have achieved, announcing earlier this week that the Prime Video and YouTube apps will be supported on each other’s CTV devices. That’s good news for viewers who have had incomplete experiences.

Then Colin describes a new service Amazon’s Twitch has launched called Twitch Prime. Colin sees it as another opportunity for Amazon to drive value back to the Prime service and even create new Prime subscribers. Last, Colin shares some new data illustrating that even though Prime Video has made progress in video, its original programming is still not at Netflix’s level.

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Frustrated Chromecast and Fire TV users can now breathe a sigh of relief: parent companies Google and Amazon have announced that apps for YouTube and Prime Video are officially available the other company’s CTV devices. That means Prime Video can be cast once again using Chromecast and is on Android TV devices. And YouTube’s app is available on Fire TV Stick (2nd gen), Fire TV Stick 4K, Fire TV Cube, Fire TV Stick Basic Edition, and Fire TV smart TVs (e.g. Toshiba, Insignia, Element, Westinghouse).

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Yesterday eMarketer shared its U.S. advertising forecast for 2019, predicting that digital ads will account for $129.3 billion or 54.3% of spending, while traditional ads will drop to 45.8% of the market. eMarketer said it’s the first time digital will surpass  traditional in share of market.

Digital has been on a trajectory for years to achieve this milestone, so in a sense there’s no major surprise here. What is a surprise is the outsized role that Amazon is playing in both growing the digital ad market and taking a bigger slice of it - and how quickly this has happened.

eMarketer believes that in 2019 Amazon will take nearly 9% of digital ad spending, chiseling into Google’s and Facebook’s (the “duopoly”) combined share which stood at 60% in 2018 but is forecast to drop to 59.3% in 2019. eMarketer cites Amazon’s “shoppers’ behavioral data for targeting and provides access to purchase data in real time” which was previously only available to advertisers/agencies through retail partners.

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I’m pleased to present the 449th edition of the VideoNuze podcast (and our first of the new year!), with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

On this week’s podcast, Colin and I discuss why we both believe most subscription video services will trend away from a pure direct-to-consumer (DTC) model and instead embrace large platforms for distribution. Roku’s plan to support subscription services (following Amazon Channels and Apple’s TV app) bolsters the trend.

There are numerous benefits to third party distribution for both content providers and consumers. DTC will still have a place in go-to-market strategies, but it will become smaller, except for major players like Netflix and Hulu.

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Yesterday’s announcement by Roku, that it would begin offering SVOD and ad-free premium cable TV networks (what Roku calls “Premium Subscriptions”) within The Roku Channel, is the latest sign that subscription video services are turning to bigger third party platforms to add and retain paying subscribers. Despite all the industry excitement over direct-to-consumer (“DTC”) business models, third party distribution remains critical.

Roku’s move evokes what Amazon has been doing with its Amazon Channels program for just over 3 years, which I've been bullish on from the beginning. Prime subscribers are able to choose from dozens of different small and large SVOD services and premium cable TV networks and have the fees billed directly to their credit card on file with Amazon. Free trials are commonplace and the content is viewed seamlessly within the Prime Video app on multiple devices.

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I’m pleased to present the 448th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Continuing our tradition for our final podcast of the year, this week Colin and I discuss the top 10 video stories of 2018 - at least in our humble opinions. Once again it has been a very active 12 months, with lots of innovation and change. Colin and I have had a great time analyzing and discussing the critical industry trends each week and we hope you’ve enjoyed listening to our thoughts in 2018.

Let us know what you think of our choices, whether you agree or disagree!

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